Some times when you are driving you might hear on the news, see on a highway traffic display or receive on your smart phone a notification about an Amber or Silver Alert. Many times these alerts include make, model, color and license plate of a vehicle of interest to the authorities. Some other times these alerts describe the person and their clothing, and location last seen. However, to be in the look-out for a vehicle or individual matching the description may be distracting from the actual driving especially if such vehicle or individual is spotted.
For most notorious cases, amber alert for example, law enforcement tries to alert the drivers to spot a certain vehicle or person and then to inform the authorities. This presents a potential distraction to the drivers as they might be in the look out and paying less attention to the current traffic conditions. Furthermore, if the vehicle or person in question is in fact spotted, the driver is faced with the problem of having to make a call while driving.
Existing art relies on static cameras previously mounted on poles (phone, flood lights, etc.) to perform vehicle spotting. The problem is that not all roads or areas have traffic cameras available. Thus, there are plenty of blind spots. Existing art focuses only on identifying vehicles, not individuals, and do require the vehicle to be running with some degree of driver intervention still required.